Ban4life

Another problem with "balanced" is the difficulty of playing the sides. It could be that Nod is easier than GDI to learn, but much more difficult to reach the higher levels than GDI for example. How do you draw those lines? Often people only look at what experts can do, but the middle ground is much more prominent in the game. I think the original poster is mostly afraid that you get updates every now and then, nerfing one thing and boosting another too much. Some things aren't nerfed but were so good before that after it was made balanced it feels weak, making it less desirable. People complaining all the time... I think we will not have to worry about that. There already have been a lot of big changes and I think they will leave it at that. My guess is that they will tweak things only ever so slightly if something seems over or underpowered. The price difference also makes it difficult to estimate some units, as it is harder to gauge if they are over or underpowered. You see that with increasing price the power of the units rises more or less exponentially on their field, until about 500 credits for units and 800 for tanks (as a quick estimate). A Chem trooper is clearly much less effective in most conditions than a laser chain gun trooper. A laser chain gun trooper is less effective in most conditions than a Raveshaw, but clearly not half a Raveshaw's power. I think it really won't be a problem until the modders start adding weird stuff.

Well I'm still worried. If I look at the Black Dawn unofficial download numbers after 9 days (viewtopic.php?f=13&t=9209&hilit=unofficial+black+dawn), they have easily over 65000 downloads. This might include multiple downloads and testing which download server is the best. Still, it's an incredible number for 9 days. Especially with the low media coverage at that time for a small single player campaign. These are by the way the only numbers they could track with a some reliability according to the thread, so the actual download number is probably higher. So imagine we have 10 communities who all place 10 full game servers. This equals 10*10*64=6400 players able to play. With the Black Dawn download numbers in hand, we can see that we need not a hundred servers, but probably around 800-900 servers (assuming some double downloads and not everyone playing at the same time). This rough estimate is for the first few days only, as a lot of players will stop for various reasons. Even so, the player number will stay quite high for a while if we have enough servers. With the recent coverage of many big and small sites and magazines, there might be a much larger potential players than Black Dawn. Black Dawn wasn't so much in the media as Renegade-X is now. Renegade-X also fills the hole that C&C left a tiny bit, so that might also increase the numbers. I do realize that I'm wondering about worst case scenario's in download numbers and people wanting to play, but it doesn't seem such a long shot in my opinion. Do we really have a 100 communities? Now I'm wondering if we can reach 200 64player servers to wreak Havoc on. Let alone 500+.... I just want such a big player base we can last for many years. New players means fresh tactics and a renewed community. We can only win if we have enough potential servers in case the amount of players is absurdly high.

I think the guides that are being made will be mostly for starters and the lower middle group (correct me if I'm wrong). A lot of Renegade tactics will still be the same in Renegade-X. This counts for all experience levels. There are also a lot of extra and changed tactics to be employed where we can help with. Covering a ion or nuclear strike with an airstrike, changed tactics in all air combat, suicide runs against tanks with timed C4, when to run and when not to run with the stealth black hand and many more. I think an advanced strategy guide would be very useful. Especially with Renegade-X, as you can play so many styles it takes more than one person his viewpoint to cover them all. Questions of when to reload and when money can best be spend are very real questions and a guide can help nurture newbies with these questions into professionals. It might be the best to have all guides have the same full information, so best to talk to the dev's about it. I will be happy to share some of my tactics when the game is released for one viewpoint on the tactics.

That's what I mean. Sorry if it wasn't clear. I meant game servers. I'll edit it.

I posted this question before in the FAQ, but no one has answered it. So this is a new approach. I'm wondering how the game servers will start at the beginning of the game. The dev's have obviously thought about it, as they had contact with the studio that was creating C&C 2. They probably found a substitute or something for it, but I wonder if it's enough. The Black Down download figures raised into the hundreds of thousands of downloads. With all the recent coverage, it might be much higher for Renegade-X. All people wanting to play on the internet. With the release, will there be enough game servers? If not, how will you add more in time, before you lose a lot of potential fanbase? If there are 2000 people playing on servers and another 8000 that can't, it's bad for the image of the game. Now I don't need a whole explanation, as the dev's probably don't want to give a whole explanation about how they arranged it. I just want to know if they have an adequate failsafe to prevent the loss of so many good players that would give the game full servers all day. A yes or no will do =)

Well the current consensus as far as I can see is that it would favour the current attacking team. This means that the team with the most power at the start of sudden death will have a bigger chance to win, not the one with points. My hope is that the team that has the most strength at the end of the game shows that they would be the winner after this time limit, so they have the advantage. This hopefully makes taking out strategic targets when nearing the time limit much more prominent instead of camping. If you still lose, the other team just proved stronger. Think about games that you are the underdog all the time and suddenly you strike back magnificently. You can argue that it wasn't deserved or anything, but the result is there. You won despite being crushed all the time. So all in all it's not luck, as everything but the base destruction is going normally, at least in my version of the SD. You don't attribute the whole game as luck do you? In the end it is up to servers, and I think I will enjoy playing on these servers.

I would agree with free aim if all extreme advantages are removed somehow. This is from wall-hugging to the increase of perspective to easier head shots. The rest is just a small advantage in looking and for me a valid strategy, as it was already in the game and I learned to play with it's advantages and disadvantages.

For Black Dawn maybe, but not for Renegade-X. It was mentioned in several posts about changing skins and values that it would essentially become another version, and thus rejected from servers with the real version. My knowledge is limited in this, but I highly suggest you just play with the highest resolution that is supported by the game and possibly by tweaking your graphics card as suggested, but not tweak it in the files.

Well I live in the cupboard under the stairs with my 20'' flat-screen and I can't fit another one. It came by mail when I was 11. Seriously though it's like omega79 says, some people have other priorities. I have a small screen to begin with, but a second one costs a lot of Euro's (hurrah for Europe!). From that money I can buy a return ticket for 500-1000 km (310.686-621.371 miles for your convenience) most of the time. It can even be stretched to much further in some occasions, not counting hitch-hiking. One of these trips is much more awesome than having a second monitor, so I only have the one. I called it teamspeak because it was team speak in many ways. I don't care about all the programs that are made to speak to each other, I just want to know how it will work in Renegade-X. So far my guess is to get some people you know, debate what program you use, connect and start playing.

Well aside from the arguments already given, the recognition is a great part of Renegade as well. There will most probably be no generic soldiers, even if it would only affect your own visuals. If there were, it would probably either affect everyone to balance visuals and such, as it might help in spotting people. That being said, they might add an option to change skins like in the original Renegade.

I was concerned about the structure of your arguments, not the vocabulary. Although they do help if you just keep the text simple. Or as Einstein allegedly said "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Although I hope to aim at a more clear argument, as you need to convince a lot of people. Most of these people aren't native speakers, and neither am I. So lets put a big gun on a sedan! That vehicle was in the extra's, so it's obviously meant to be used! Even mapmakers made them available without the cheats! The properties can be edited (health / armor / speed / turning radius / damage / rate of fire / etc), so they are irrelevant. They can be edited and amended along the way in Renegade-X to produce a formidable combat vehicle! But my point was actually that the recon bike doesn't fit with the current arsenal in its design, just like the sedan above would not fit in there. It's kind of what I said already, only more from your viewpoint. I said it can present a problem. I think and feel that many people will not like it and I myself definitely don't. I would agree to some new maps that are made specially with also the recon bike in mind. I'll explain more at the end of this post. But I never said that I assumed that I was correct. I always stated viewpoints or discussions that already have passed. Read carefully before you argue these kind of things. It only makes people guarded and you'll never get your point across. You are free to not agree with it. I'll try to argue and reason with you to convince you otherwise, but I don't expect much effect. Attacking me personally again is not something I like. The only offence I might have given you, is commenting on the structure of your arguments. Also I don't use statistics as I don't have them. Neither do you. All my arguments are reasoning (Smaller model=easier access=abuse/vehicle barrier visibility) with my considerations and thoughts attached to them. I make the abuse part big in my thoughts, as it's something that has happened and I really don't like. Now for the topic. How I would make the recon bike work, albeit in maps with the recon bike in mind. The new turrets that you can man are very interesting. The rocket tower has 12 small homing rockets that it can fire. You could increase the power of the recon bike with this, while increasing the reload time to make it a true hit and run vehicle. Then you put the total health on 300, like the Humvee, as well as the Humvee's light armour. Put the price at 800, same as the flame tank, and you might have a vehicle that is useful while keeping to it's nature. It is priced quite high, as it's high mobility and small size present a hard target and gives new tactics to pursue. A lot of them involving quick infiltration and possibly evasion of base defences. So it is overpriced in damage and health, but the addition of speed and turning open a lot of tactics. The price is also high to avoid too many people taking it, so you get a balanced team with decent fire-power. All in all, it would serve as a quick single person transport, infiltrator, long range quick attack and return damage dealer or rusher for those moments that you have to attack really quickly while doing a lot of damage on entry of the battle zone. I could see this work in specialised maps. Not in the current maps though, it would f*ck the balance up. Also what does GDI get in return? Not another recon bike I hope.

Just look at the FAQ, the last trailer and lots of threads. It would have saved you the time of the rant. They cannot make money because of a contract with EA. Simple as that. No advertising. No micro transactions, so no f2p but pay to win stuff. No buying or selling. No donations or anything else. The only thing that needs money is not related to the dev's and are servers. They need donations to keep running, which is probably not that much.

@The Yeti: although I'm not a dev, I think this one is a certain yes. Did you read all the FAQ's? I checked some video's (thank you Gunrun amd Kenz3001) and have some questions. My first question is regarding the manned base defenses in Hourglass. Apparently both teams can enter the turrets. Would this not be too powerful for SBH? They can just enter the turrets at an unguarded moment, creating havoc. Especially if 4 try it at the same time, you can make the way for a great assault. It's difficult of course and good teams will probably have some people in the turrets at all times due to the quick pace of the map, but certainly a danger. Especially for small teams or contests. A second problem is teamspeak (ts). Is it on the server or through a ts program? And I don't see who is talking, making possible abuse a problem. I don't know how it is organised though. Is it possible to address your whole team, or only your squad? How do you join a ts squad? Is that just some friends who decided to connect on one ts frequency or something? I only have experience with planet side 2 ts and I have the feeling that this will be completely different. The remote C4 doesn't seem to have a time between throwing and blowing up? At least that's what it seems like in the Kenz3001 movies. He blows himself up all the time barely a second after throwing (movie 6 at least) I had more questions, but forgot them. Maybe later

Some will, but like others said a lot of people won't like it. Vanilla + Non-Advantageous mods is the best mix I believe. Engineer stays an engineer. Sniper stays a sniper. I just want to note that I love your none destructive fire about this. I personally don't agree and think weapon drops are good and can keep gameplay fresh, same as shells. Its just getting used to. But your fire has solid arguments that I can admire. Eventually it boils down to an opinion and I don't agree with the opinion, but the rest is perfect! Even though the above is far from your best work ^^ I already stated my dislike for advantageous ranks several times, so this might be a little spam

My point might not be completely clear. The damage of the barrels seem to be partly "stored" and partly wasted. It does not do damage while the rockets are (about 6-10% damage per volley, some rockets miss). It is taken down to 66% in about 50 seconds. A GDI flame tank comes to the scene, a rocket barrage seems to do 27+% damage, (it has 39% left) and then it just explodes with the GDI flame tank flaming it. The increase of damage of the rockets might be a late release of that "stored" damage. All just a theory, but it just looks so weird. It could also be a lag issue or something, but it doesn't explain why the rockets do have instant damage. So it's not a matter of the rockets doing an incredible amount of damage, but I suspect something else.

HaTe stay cool, I know you can . Don't draw each other out. Its a already heated discussion of favour and non favour without personal tension. And yes no Fallacies please.

Yes that is a problem, as the guns nearly never touch the flame tank. I agree with HaTe that if your gun's go inside a building it should not fire, but not registering damage at distance, even if it's this small, should not happen. The rockets look pretty powerful though. 30% damage! that's 240 damage without breaking a sweat. Then 2 quick shots with the normal guns... Still it looks like it might be glitched or something. It was from 66% to 0 in a few seconds, and a flame tank and a mammy together would take a few seconds longer if I'm any judge. The rockets first did only a few % damage at the start (not hitting everything I know), but nowhere near 30%. Maybe some of the damage was only registered much later than the rockets? I think it's not a glitch with clipping, but a registering problem. (btw if I understand it correctly, clipping is that your guns go inside a structure or are so close to an obstacle that it won't fire/will not do damage?)

I think HaTe's point is aimed at the recon bike to be able to enter nearly every building and crevice it can find, if not for the vehicle blockers. Other vehicles are very limited in their access to any buildings or other openings by objects, so it is only apparent of a select few, making it much less of a problem. A recon bike easily entering any structure or tunnel can create serious abuse. Vehicle blockers have been discussed years earlier and the dev's already had thought about it. They would implement more objects before vehicle blockers to make the blockers obsolete or at least less apparent. This might not have been done in all maps (islands shows no such blockers in the trailer that I can see, probably for balance issues to still be able to fire into the tunnel), but for most. So it might not have been a too big of a problem in Renegade, but they did not want this in Renegade-X. This makes the recon bike a pain for mapmakers, as they suddenly have to take into account for a small vehicle that might be able to circumvent security. Security that is meant to prevent abuses like too easy access to a base or driving around in a building killing everyone. They would be forced to rethink the whole map to make it balanced again. Other gameplay issues arise. It is a relatively weak vehicle in both damage and health and is not at all perfect. It takes up one vehicle slot, while not being very effective. Why would you have a quick vehicle that has anti vehicle rockets, but deals so little damage before being easily destroyed? It's hit and run tactics, even if successful, will hardly make a dent on health when normal tactics with engineers involved. Any normal tactic will yield more damage and longer life than a recon bike, making the recon bike a fun/abuse only vehicle for me. Possibly an expensive transport to be destroyed then arriving at a location. Even if you remove these problems, it would be a vehicle I consider not right for Renegade. Just like we don't put the Redeemer of UT in here, or a functional SSM launcher. It just doesn't fit in the game style. This vehicle just has weird properties, starting from its size, speed and payload, that all together just don't fit in Renegade or Renegade-X. This is even though I agree that it is the epitome of Nod play-style from the C&C universe, together with the stank. And even though my next argument is moot, Westwood thought that the recon bike wasn't even right in the SP, so they only put it in one cut-scene and not in the game. They created it with purpose and saw it would create too many problems. This makes it officially not in the game. Oh and please structure your arguments more. It's really hard to understand you. Swearing is also not something that is promoted.

Well whatever the cause, the glitches could (relatively) easily be prevented in Renegade-X. With the better physics engine and better net code it would work. Still I think in terms of speed, weapons and usefulness it is not right in Renegade-X. Low health, long reload times and such for a decent chunk of credits make it a weirdly popular vehicle while it is strategically just a weak choice. Cranking up several features might help, but my opinion stays the same. It just doesn't fit enough for Renegade-X.

I don't know if I played the original you played. I played from halfway 2002 till now and only seen this ranking in game on modded servers several years later. The perks were only on heavily modded servers too although I haven't seen them in this form. Still, at the beginning of the match everyone might be the same rank, but after 15 minutes people wouldn't. If you join the server then, you have a big problem. Regardless of when and where the rank comes from, it creates inequality in one way or another, giving the experienced and good players more than the bad and new players. Although I'm not at all for communism and giving bad players aim assist or anything, the gap between good and bad should only be from skill and tactical insight and nothing more.

As discussed in other thread's, there won't be any from the dev's. The best you might expect is the one with ladder points that only gives a ranking and nothing more. No advantages or random weapons. But even will probably not be made by the dev's. Any ranking you want must be made by sever modders when modding tools are released. It gives friction by at least more than a few posters here, as it gives unfair advantages to people playing longer on a specific server. Edit: there will be weapon drops when the server puts this option on. Thos option will not be in the first release but will be implemented by the dev's. Go to the faq and you will find the answer.

I know there will not be a console version, but this discussion is itching me. I nearly never play on consoles. The consoles are for only some type of games, like super smash brothers. These would be nearly impossible for the mouse and keyboard, but perfect for controllers. FPS, in any form, is mouse and keyboard material. You don't really have a maximum turn circle and I nearly never lose track of where I'm looking. If I do, I can just as easily regain that track. If I get surprised from a ledge somewhere behind me, I swivel near instantly to return fire. Try that on a console and he might already be gone. I've only played a FPS on a console a few times. All were horrible in comparison to the PC. Halo and Modern Warfare for example. Especially for the last one. We lost track easily when going up or down a slope and aimed too high/low. We both played death-match for the first time, but it happened a few times that we just shot a random under-barrel grenade in the general direction of the other and it flew over 3/4 of the map to land on the others head. For a 1 vs 1 with two newbies this should not happen once, let alone over 5 times! The auto tracking of targets too. You just have to move a little with the target and it will follow it automatically! Granted, if that is off, consoles are suddenly much harder to hit each other, but I don't want any program to grab the controls from me and start winning for me. It just doesn't feel right. But like I said, even without the auto-aim things, it is just horrible to operate. Give me a mouse and a keyboard, and I can easily enter/exit a vehicle, grab the right guns, change squads, teamspeak to the right group/person, crouch, lie down and stand up again, run and walk, lock camera's to turrets or the chassis, change views, type into chat, request data, change keyboard lay-out, change turning speed of the mouse (nice if you share the computer with another person and they change the settings all the time), adjust programs (for taping your matches for example), check objectives and maps, quickly put down markers on that map or adjust the maps and hold down many buttons at once and not lose aiming capabilities. Try one of that on the console within one or two clicks of a button away. The only think I can think of right now that consoles are better in is starting up time (which can easily be trumped by an expensive PC) and flying planes. All aerial vehicles are hard to learn on a keyboard for me but are more natural on a controller. But to pay an extra membership besides my internet to play is too much for that one advantage. I know that I'm older than google and might be biased (even though the pistol for the old nes was so much cooler than any wii mote or other controller today), but the consoles just don't cut it for FPS for me. Mouse and keyboard is how pro's play in my opinion. "Get on the pc you d*mned kids!"

I'm against teleporting back. It would create a lot of problems for the dev's. Removing and spawning characters is probably relatively easy. Removing and respawning tanks (which might be more fair in most conditions) will be tricky. Where will you place them? Is there enough space? How do you keep the bind/lock bonds to the vehicle owners? You could do something cool like transporting everyone in by helikopters, forcing everyone out in the base while tank drivers will spawn one after the other and are brought to the base by helicopter too. If a drop-off point is full the helicopter will wait with dropping the occupied tank. Talking about making things easier for the dev's... anyway my own vote would go to continue the game like normal without any teleportation or resets. The vote in marathon could also be timed. I mean that the vote is passed (50+% each team has voted, 2/3 yes is a good one) and then a timer starts. SD starts when the timer reaches zero, giving both teams the opportunity to gain the upper hand. This will negate any opposition "because they were losing" to the vote. The arms race that will arise will most likely end up with camping outside a base, waiting until the timer is up. Meanwhile the other team will do anything in it's power to get out of that camping situation. Though camping is most certainly not what is intended, it might be better than the other disadvantages. But as already stated, if both teams vote yes, they want it to end with a bang regardless of advantages. SD is for me the preferred way in a too long marathon match, opposed to just ending the match. I think it has great potential for both time matches and a whole game mode. Of course it is up to servers to adopt this, as the normal game mode is still great.

So basicly you are saying that the glitchy bike isn't glitchy. It was glitchy because the modders made it glitchy. A glitchy glitch made by a modder is not glitchy in itself, making it not glitchy?

That's your right Can you elaborate? Or is it just a feeling? Whoops I made a mistake. That rule shouldn't be there. I totally agree with the no repair being too strong (as I said in earlier posts). It apparently works in Rencorner, but for this mode I would suggest a double damage instead of no repair. I'm going to edit it asap. So I agree with your complete list and arguments for traditional SD, but change the no-repairs to double damage to buildings and we're set! Only why can you still mine? Why remove the mines in the first place? The SBH's power is relatively reduced, and people probably feel this as a weakness. I think people are not going to waste the last few minutes of the match as an SBH when there is double damage to buildings. If they are one at the start of SD, they will move quickly to take advantage and after that take something more suitable. That's what I would do at least. I think the amount of SBH's will be drastically reduced. Still I see your point and hope that I'm right. It would make that unbalance less powerful. Maybe it will go the other way. The loss of power in having SBH's will make GDI able to march to the Nod base and destroy it. I'm conflicted about this point. @Daedhart about one-hit kill: I think that overall it would still be a difficult match. You don't need the buildings any more except to stay alive, so the moment you bunker up in one (last) building, say the GDI Ref in field, it would be near impossible to take. The whole thing is a great funnel of death for an attacking party.